bath time

Now moored in Katha,home of Eric Blair (later George Orwell) in the mid 1920s, the highlight of the day was a trip to Nat Pauk Elephant Camp.

Young elephants and their equally young mahouts live and train here in the teak and iron wood forests. After a very bumpy and sporadic, the bus kept breaking down, ride we walked for 30 minutes on a forest track listening to the clunk of wooden elephant bells as a line of ellies passed us, ridden and controlled by young, blue clothed lads sitting on their elephants necks.
Using a scratching stick and their feet tucked in behind the Asian elephant’s very neat ears, tiny compared to the big flappers of an African elephant, and called commands there is an amazing rapport between mahout and elephant.
Bath time involves a great deal of splashing, soaping, scrubbing and lolling around!..no rubber ducks in this pond :)

Partners for life, when an elephant ‘retires’ it stays with its mahout through retirement. The youngest mahout in this group was 14 and his elephant a mere baby of eight so they will be together for a long time.

They were a feisty lot these small but powerful creatures, particularly when in a herd around which we, a much more tentative mob, were milling.
A young calf was with her mum and ‘babysitter’ and took great interest in the banana basket which was fun for us but caused a few anxious moments for mum and nanny who trumpeted and stamped!

Elephants are still used in the teak and ironwood forests where they haul the trunks down to the riverside from where logs are shipped on boats or built into huge rafts.
There is a concerted effort to keep the logging elephant an active part of the landscape as well as the ‘yellow elephant’ ,the term given to Caterpillar trucks used in large commercial logging operations.